Bolt from the Blue

Robert Altman who certainly went on to bigger and better things on the big screen wrote and directed this Maverick episode. It's a real comedy of errors in which Roger Moore is mistaken for the younger partner of Tim Graham a grizzled old codger who makes a living stealing horses. A highly dangerous occupation because if caught that was a hanging offense law or no law.

Still Will Hutchins who insists he's not the lawyer called Sugarfoot plays another idealistic young attorney who gets Beau Maverick as a client. Hutchins is no Tom Brewster from Sugarfoot and it isn't his skills that set things right in the end.

Kudos also go in this one to Richard Hale who plays a hanging judge who loves his work and to Fay Spain who is the sister of a woman that Graham's partner did wrong to. She has her own agenda as far as that man who she believes is Roger Moore is concerned.

I could see this one as being an episode James Garner might have done had he still been with the show.

This is Ed Robertson's favorite from season 4. Beau is mistaken for a horse thief, and we know what they did with horse thieves in those days. The title derives from prospector Ebenezer Bolt. Beau spends a good bit of time with a noose around his neck awaiting the "hanging judge," Hookstraten, who rides along singing "The Hanging Tree." He wants $25 for sentencing Beau to hang. They must wait until midnight, however, because the law says a man cannot be hung on Sunday. Will Hutchins is a lawyer in this one. He was Sugarfoot in one of Warner Brothers' westerns. Those TV westerns shielded a generation from such American realities as Korea and Vietnam. For a while! "Handsome is as handsome does!" Written by Robert Altman.